Rhode Island
Summer before Freshman Year
“It’s Shake It Till You Make It tiiiiiime!” Dad bellowed as he burst into the living room.
“Yes!” Miranda pumped her fist, promptly abandoning her video game remote on the couch cushion and running over to him. “I’m getting the Chocolate Disaster!”
From the kitchen, my mother groaned. “Kevin, why do you insist on doing that challenge every year? Then I have to listen to you moan about how sick you feel for the rest of the night.”
“Tradition, Amanda!” Uncle Tommy called as he galloped down the stairs. “Victory will once again be mine!”
Three summers ago, Dad had decided on a whim—more like a mutual dare—that he and Uncle Tommy should go up against each other in the Shake It Till You Make It challenge at the Bellevue Ice Cream Shoppe. Store rules dictated that anyone who could drink three of their thick, ginormous shakes got a fourth on the house, but my father had upped the stakes by deciding the loser would get dinner and dish duty the following night. Three years out of three, Dad wound up flipping post-challenge burgers—in Aunt Tess’s pink-flowered apron. That part was Uncle Tommy’s stipulation.
“Come on, girls.” Dad clapped his hands, my cue to turn off the TV. “Hope you’re hungry.”
As we headed down the driveway like a little caravan—we always walked to preempt some of the sugar—David’s father emerged from the house next door, holding a big cardboard box.
“Hey, Jimmy!” Uncle Tommy called. “You guys wanna join us for some ice cream?”
“Thanks, Tom.” Mr. Kerrigan hoisted the box onto the trunk of his car and fished his keys out of his pocket. “But I have to get this junk to Goodwill before my father changes his mind again. I’ll bet David might like to go, though.” He nodded at Miranda and me. “Why don’t you girls run in and get him?”
Miranda needed no further coaxing. She took off on her bony legs, leaving me to catch up at the Kerrigans’ back door. The TV was so loud that I wondered if David would even hear her musical little knocks, but a moment later he appeared. When we told him where we were going and asked him to come along, he didn’t hesitate to accept.
David retreated to the living room, where his grandfather grunted in response to his statement that he was going out with the neighbors. A second later he reappeared, and I stepped aside to let him through the screen door. Before he could shut it behind him, his eyes dropped to my leg and his face filled with horror.
“Oh, shit!” He clapped his hand over his mouth and apologized for cursing, probably more for Miranda’s benefit than mine, before motioning to the huge purple and blue bruise on my thigh. “Did I do that? The other day, when I hit you with—”
I shook my head and tugged my shorts lower before he could finish the thought. “No, no, that was already there. Tripped over something. I bruise easily. It looks worse than it is.”
“Besides, that’s not where you hit—,” Miranda started, but I led her toward the steps by the crook of the arm.
“Come on, everybody’s waiting.”
Once we got to the ice-cream shop, Dad and Uncle Tommy’s competition drew a little crowd. Probably because we weren’t exactly inconspicuous, pounding our fists on the table, chanting, “Chug, chug, chug!” Among the onlookers were three girls eating cones, looking like they’d just come from the beach, bikini straps tied around their necks visible beneath tank tops and sundresses. My socks, sneakers, and T-shirt made me look like a tomboy in comparison. But after seeing David’s reaction to the bruise on my thigh, I was glad I’d worn something that covered the ones on my arm and foot—the ones he had given me.
The girls stood behind Mom, and she wasted no time swiveling around to chat them up. The woman would talk to walls if she thought there was any chance they’d talk back. We were similar in a lot of ways, but that wasn’t one of them. A fact she refused to accept. Which was why I slouched in my seat the moment I heard her say, “Oh, you’re the same age as my daughter!” She turned to me with excited, expectant eyes, like she wanted me to burst off my chair and hug them for sharing my birth year. “Kelsey, this is Marisol. Her name means ‘sea and sun’ in Spanish. Isn’t that pretty?”
I nodded and tried to form my mouth into some semblance of a smile. I hated when she did this. She was forever dragging me into conversations like a reluctant dog on a leash, lecturing me to socialize as if the fact that I preferred keeping to myself was a defect in me she was determined to fix.
“Marisol,” Mom said, “do you go to school here?”
“Yep.” Marisol wiped a stray drip of mint chocolate chip from her chin. “But I’m actually going to Costa Rica to study abroad next semester.”
My mother’s widened eyes met mine. “Isn’t that exciting?”
“Wow, qué bueno,” David piped up, causing the girls to twitter with laughter.
“Mm-hm. Really cool.” I meant it, but I had no interest in learning this girl’s life story when I’d probably never see her again and had nothing even half as noteworthy to contribute to the conversation. So I stood up and said, “Excuse me, I need to run to the ladies’ room. Good luck in Costa Rica.”
I didn’t have to look to know my mother’s mortified eyes were following me as I left the table.
By the time I came back, my father was on his feet, fists raised above his head in victory, people clapping and patting him on the back before drifting back to their own business. He’d actually won, and I didn’t get to see it because I’d been hiding in the bathroom.
“Good thing I took a picture,” my mother said pointedly. “You missed Daddy winning.”
I mumbled something unintelligible under my breath as we filed up to the front of the store to place the rest of our orders. That was the other part of our tradition: Once the competition was over, everyone else got their ice cream and we headed over to the Cliff Walk, the walking/biking trail between the mansions and the beach.
“So why didn’t you want to talk to those girls earlier?” David asked as he licked a glob of salted caramel from the softball-size mound on his cone. We had separated into groups as we walked, with Dad and Uncle Tommy at the front, Mom and Aunt Tess with Miranda between them in the middle, and David and me lagging in the back.
“Because I can’t stand when my mother tries to turn me into a social experiment. She thinks my personality is faulty because she enjoys starting random conversations with strangers and I don’t.” I kicked a pebble out of my way. “I get all paranoid that I’ll come off boring and stupid and they’ll end up thinking I’m lame anyway. Is it really so wrong to not like talking to people I don’t know?”
David nudged me with his elbow. “But you don’t know me.”
“Sure I do. You’re David. You think you have mad video game skills, and you definitely have a terrible Spanish accent.”
He threw his head back and laughed. “And you’re cool with that?”
“Uh-huh.” I didn’t know how to explain that I didn’t click with people very often, but when I did, it was instant and lasting. David was one of those people who was just easy to be around.
“Ditto. And for what it’s worth, you’re not lame at all.” He looked thoughtful as he took another swipe at his cone. “I guess I’m the opposite. You seem really close with your family. I talk to everyone, and the only people I think suck are the ones I’m related to.” A hint of bitterness hardened his voice. It disappeared when he added, “Except my dad. He’s awesome.”
We stopped walking, eating in silence for a few seconds as David stared through the chain-link fence separating us from the expansive lawn behind the Astors’ sprawling mansion.
“Can you believe this place was built as a summer ‘cottage’?” he said. “I mean, if they made something this behemoth to live in for two months a year, can you imagine what their permanent house looked like?”
I hooked my fingertips around one of the wire links and stared dreamily at the stately windows and pillared wraparound porch. For an instant I pictured myself floating down the grand staircase inside with layers of Victorian ruffles billowing around my feet. Newport always had that effect—making me wish I could go back in time and spend a day in the shoes of the filthy rich Gilded Age elite. “I think I must’ve lived here in a past life. Maybe that’s why I love it so much.”
David’s eyes darkened. “Some people live here now and don’t even appreciate it.”
“Well,” I said, hoping to lighten the mood as we started moving again, “if my present-day luck is any indication, Past Kelsey was probably a scullery maid.”
That got a chuckle out of him. “You know, you’re pretty funny for someone with a defective personality.”
My father saved David from a retaliatory shove by yelling, “Slippery footing up ahead! Hold on to your cones!”
We’d reached the part of the Cliff Walk that lived up to its name—where the cement trail gave way to boulders and rocks without a guardrail in sight. The part that never failed to bring out my inner chickenshit.
“Um, you can go ahead if you want to,” I said, pulling the hem of my shorts over the mottled splotch David had noticed earlier. “I’m going to head back. I don’t think the ice cream is agreeing with my stomach.”
“No, I don’t want you to walk alone.” The look of concern on his face made me feel awful for being such a wimp. “I’ll go with you.”
I tried to protest, but he called up to my parents, who, ever paranoid, told me to stay with him until they got back. Not that I minded.
We chatted the whole walk home, and I’d forgotten I was supposed to be feeling sick by the time we reached David’s grandfather’s house. Until we stepped into the kitchen, and the sensation that something wasn’t right caused a real knot to form in my stomach.
David’s father sat crouched in the door frame that separated the kitchen and dining room, a dustpan in one hand and a small broom in the other. At his feet lay a pile of broken glass.
“Dad? What happened?”
Mr. Kerrigan exhaled and scratched his head, but before he could answer, Jay appeared in the doorway from the living room. “The two of you think you’re funny, hiding things on me?” he shouted, pointing his finger in David’s face. “Next time I’ll tear this whole house apart!”
I jumped and hid behind David without thinking, then immediately felt ridiculous. He might’ve been yelling like a maniac, but Jay was a slight, silver-haired old man. His eyes were bloodshot, his robe sagged on his frame, and despite being mid-outburst, he looked weary and sad. Like someone who’d spent too many years fighting his demons, only to be bested by them in the end.
Over the next few minutes, as I cowered near the back door, I learned that David’s father had hidden Jay’s alcohol before he left for Goodwill. After he drove off, Jay had gone looking for it and, when he couldn’t find it, opted to throw almost every glass in the cabinet against various kitchen surfaces instead.
“I’ll finish cleaning this, Dad. You go take care of him,” David spat.
Mr. Kerrigan reluctantly handed over the broom and dustpan, and David knelt to the floor as his father ushered his grandfather upstairs.
I fidgeted uncomfortably. “Um, can I help?”
David shook his head, his lips set so tight that I could see the outline of his braces bulging between his nose and mouth. He made two sweeps into the pan before shoving his tools aside and slumping against the door frame with a heavy sigh, letting his head fall against the wood.
“I don’t get it,” he said, grinding the palms of his hands against his temples. “How can someone throw his life away?” He looked at me with dark, incredulous eyes, not waiting for an answer. “How can you just not care about anything? How can someone own a great place like this and not even give a crap what happens to it?”
I walked over and settled on the floor against the opposite side of the door frame. “I’m sorry.” I didn’t know what else to say. After what he’d said about his family on the Cliff Walk, I got the feeling he wasn’t just talking about his grandfather. “Is there . . . something else going on?”
He didn’t respond right away, absently stroking the smooth curve of a broken chunk of glass on the floor instead. Then he looked at me. “You know my parents are divorced, right?”
“I heard.”
“My mom was the one who wanted it, and she was such a bitch about it. Brought my dad to court over every little thing, nickel-and-dimed him for all their stuff, including our house. Then she turned around and fucking sold it. My dad never did anything to her, and she acted like she had something to prove. But you know how hard she fought for custody of me?” He picked up the piece of glass and tossed it against a cabinet. “She didn’t.”
My heart broke a little bit for him at that moment. I reached out and took his hand, because it felt like the right thing to do. “Her loss.”
“You think so?”
“Totally.”
Light came back to his eyes, and he sat up straighter as he looked from me to our loosely twined fingers. He cleared his throat but kept his hand in mine. “Do you think this can stay between us? I don’t want everyone in Norwood to know how messed up my life is.”
“You’re no more messed up than anyone else, David.”
“Still.” His grin widened. “I’m trying out for the baseball team. I’ll forget all about how I demolished you in the video tournament if you come to some of my games. Since no one there will know me from a hole in the dirt.”
I couldn’t help but smile back. “Definitely. We’ll have to hang out sometime.”
But we didn’t hang out sometime. We hung out all the time.
I knew I liked David as soon as I met him, but I had no idea the boy who knocked me over with a baseball would become my go-to plus one any time I was bored or lonely. Or breathing. I didn’t know he’d give the best hugs, or share my love of summer and my irrational fear of bats and my obsession with chocolate chip cookies.
I had no way of knowing he’d become my best friend in the world.